Ground Broken for Westhampton Community Center; Long-Awaited Resource Could Open in 2026

Southampton Town officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking on the long-awaited Westhampton Community Center project next tot he Westhampton Beach Elementary School on Mill Road this week. After more than 20 years in the making, the town hopes the center could be open by the end of 2026.

Even as Town Board members, the project’s developers and town administrators gripped their silver shovels, site crews stood by backhoes and dump trucks to begin hauling away the piles of dense brush they had ripped from the property’s road frontage already this week.

The town’s project manager, Nicholas Jimenez, said that the builders, Lipsky Construction, hope to have the foundation for the new building excavated and at least partially poured by the end of the month.

“By spring, you should see the steel superstructure up, and we want it weathertight by late spring — it’s a one-year schedule, so hopefully by this time next year we’re cutting the ribbon,” Jimenez said. “A lot can change in 12 months, of course, but I’m hoping 12 months doesn’t go beyond 13 or maybe 14 in the worst case.”

Elected officials celebrated the kickoff of the project, which has been a goal for the Westhampton area since the early 2000s and has gone through various incarnations.

“This is such an exciting day,” Supervisor Maria Moore, a former mayor of Westhampton Beach Village, said. “For too long, we’ve needed a community center and recreational opportunities on this side of town, and today we’re taking the next step to make that a reality.”

Moore harked back to the decision by her administration last year to change course from the town’s previous plans to renovate the Old Riverhead Road building that formerly housed a luxury car dealership and restaurant that had been advanced by an earlier Town Board. But critics — including the project engineers and town department heads — had said the building was ill-suited to be repurposed and did not provide enough parking or outdoor space for the sort of programming the town’s seniors and youth services programs said they needed. The town sold the building earlier this year to Appliance World.

“This is a fantastic location that is going to allow for expanded outdoor recreation and additional parking,” Moore said. “And the students can walk from the school, and we’re going to be able to build to suit our needs. That was an important change that we all thought was necessary.”

The town has owned the property where the center will be built since 2008 and at one point had plans to build a public swimming pool facility there.

Southampton Town Clerk Sundy Schermeyer, a Westhampton native, recalled when the town was pushing to develop a community center for Westhampton at the former American Legion property a short distance up Mill Road from the current site decades ago.

“I started working on the original project … when I was in the Parks & Recreation Department and we [had] all the plans and they were shovel ready and we were ready to go right down the street here and then the economy tanked and the community center went by the wayside,” she said. “And now it’s, I want to say, 20 or more years later and we’re here. And I couldn’t be more excited.”

The town has been working on the plans for the Mill Road center for nearly two years. The designs call for an approximately 9,000-square-foot building that will be split between program spaces for senior citizens and youth. The total cost is projected to be about $8 million.

The senior services side of the building will have a warming kitchen and lunchroom where the town will provide hot lunches for seniors daily, like it does currently in Hampton Bays and Bridgehampton, as well as activity rooms that Kara Bak, the town’s director of housing and community development, says will host yoga classes, art classes, card games and instructional programming that she plans to expand with the new building.

“I want to do things like classes to teach games like mahjong and canasta, more art classes and programs and cooking,” Bak said. “We have a cooking program for seniors that live alone — we teach them how to cook an affordable meal for one. That’s the kind of programs we’re going to bring here, too.”

The youth side of the building will offer new multi-use spaces that Bak said will be home to programs that have outgrown the town’s other facilities, like its youth in government and youth court programs, as well as additional counseling facilities for the town’s busy social worker counseling.

The town also has plans for outdoor spaces for senior and youth programs that have yet to be settled on. During community meetings about the center’s design, the town was bombarded with requests for extensive new athletic and activity facilities on the nearly 5-acre property surrounding the building site.

The town also will provide space for American Legion Post 834, which has been displaced since the former Legion building was condemned.